MedAI Verdict
Research tools

Medical Research

Scite

by Scite (Research Solutions)  ·  founded 2018  ·  US

Last verified

Research search and AI assistant with Smart Citations, which show whether later papers support or contrast a cited finding.

Visit SciteRead our methodology

At a glance

Pricing
7-day free trial. The pricing page lists no free plan.
HIPAA
Not disclosed
SOC 2
Not disclosed
EHRs
—
Founded
2018
HQ
US
On this page

Independent score  ·  By our public rubric

60/100Top-ranked
How it’s computed →
  • Regulatory & Compliance
    0/11

    No FDA clearance listed

  • Clinical Integration
    0/7.8

    No EHR integrations listed

  • Evidence Strength
    27/27

    5 peer-reviewed papers

  • Vendor & Market
    14.4/18

    Mid-tier funding and adoption

  • Sentiment & Transparency
    6.5/15.5

    Prices listed publicly

▸ Show all 11 dimensions

Regulatory & Compliance

  • FDA clearance0/6

    No FDA clearance listed

  • HIPAA / SOC2 / BAA0/5

    No public HIPAA/SOC2/BAA attestation

Clinical Integration

  • EHR integrations (count)0/4

    No EHR integrations listed

  • Top-3 EHR coverage (Epic / Oracle / Athena)0/2

    None of the top-3 EHRs covered

  • Bidirectional write-back0/1

    No bidirectional write-back documented

Evidence Strength

  • Peer-reviewed papers21/21

    5 peer-reviewed papers

  • RCT / meta-analysis / systematic review6/6

    1 RCT/Meta-Analysis/Systematic Review

Vendor & Market

  • Funding & adoption signal8/12

    Mid-tier funding and adoption

  • Years in market6/6

    Founded 2018 (8 years)

Sentiment & Transparency

  • Clinician sentiment (Reddit)0/9

    No clinician sentiment data available

  • Pricing transparency7/7

    Prices listed publicly

Scored October 15, 2026 · Public scoring method v1.1.0

Bottom line  ·  Best for citation evaluation

Smart Citations classify whether a citing paper supports or contradicts the citation.

1.2B+ citation statements analyzed. $20/mo personal. Critical for understanding citation context.

Editorial review  ·  By MedAI Verdict

Bottom line

Scite is a literature search and citation-analysis service that shows whether later papers support, contrast or merely mention a given finding. It fits a clinician-researcher who checks the evidence behind a claim before putting it in a manuscript. It is a weak fit for anyone who wants a quick clinical answer at the bedside, and anyone who treats its support and contrast labels as a verdict will eventually be misled.

What is Scite and who sells it?

Scite, Inc. was founded in 2018 in Brooklyn, New York, with Josh Nicholson as co-founder and CEO. Research Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: RSSS) announced the acquisition on November 27, 2023 and closed it on December 1, 2023. The signing price was $14.8 million, half cash and half stock plus a two-year earnout, and total consideration net of cash came to about $20.9 million according to MarketScreener. At the end of October 2023 the annualized subscription value was $3.6 million.

The homepage describes the product as AI for research: ask a question, get answers grounded in the scientific literature, across 322 million or more scholarly articles. That figure and the claim that every answer is "grounded in real papers, never generated or hallucinated" are the vendor's own claims.

What does it do well?

Scite's Smart Citation lists, for a given paper, the later papers that cite it and labels each citing sentence as supporting, contrasting or mentioning.

Around that sit a full-text search over articles, preprints, books, patents and datasets, plus clinical trials and grants. An AI assistant answers questions with each claim linked to a sentence in a source paper, which the vendor presents as its safeguard against invented references. Scite connects to Claude, ChatGPT and other MCP-compatible assistants, to Zotero, and to a browser extension, and it offers a developer API. The vendor says it holds direct agreements with Wiley, SAGE and more than 42 other publishers.

Where does it fall short?

Accuracy of the labels is the main question. Library guides from Calgary, Einstein and Florida State warn that labels can be wrong, that coverage varies by field and that users should read the citing passage themselves. Secondary practitioner write-ups describe the labels as useful for triage rather than as a judgment.

HIPAA, SOC 2 and HITRUST status are not stated. For a literature tool that never touches patient data this matters little. Keep patient details out of it anyway.

What does it cost?

As of October 2026 the pricing page lists Basic at $12 per month and Pro at $40 per month, both billed yearly, each with a free 7-day trial, and Enterprise at custom pricing based on users and usage. The page shows no free plan and no refund policy. The FAQ says you can cancel anytime before the trial ends to avoid charges.

What does the evidence say?

None of the peer-reviewed papers on Scite evaluates its accuracy. Three papers mention it among AI search tools: a 2025 angiotensin II meta-analysis in Medicina intensiva, a 2026 Clinical Spine Surgery article titled "Artificial Intelligence: The Cutting-Edge Research Companion", and a 2025 paper in Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery, "From Algorithms to Academia". Two further 2026 reviews, in BMC Medical Research Methodology and Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, cover AI tools in biomedical research more broadly.

Who is it for?

A resident preparing a case report who wants to know whether a cited study held up can get that from Basic at $12 a month. A guideline group checking the contested papers behind a recommendation will need to look at what Pro adds, which the pricing page does not spell out. A hospital librarian will want Enterprise pricing and a compliance conversation. A clinician who wants answers at the point of care should look at a clinical decision tool instead.

The verdict

Scite earns a seven-day trial from anyone who reads papers critically. Use the trial on a paper you already know well, and read the citing sentence before you trust any label.

Editorial review last generated October 15, 2026. Synthesized from clinician sentiment, peer-reviewed coverage, and our editorial silo picks. Refined by hand where vendor facts change.

Pricing

What it costs

All tiers are custom-quoted. The vendor does not publish per-provider list pricing.

TierMonthlyAnnualNotes
Basic—USD 1447-day free trial. The pricing page lists no free plan.
Pro—USD 4807-day free trial.
Enterprise——Custom pricing based on users and usage.

Source: vendor pricing page. Last checked October 15, 2026.

Vendor stability

Who builds it

Scite (Scite (Research Solutions)) was founded in 2018 in US, putting it 8 years into market.

Peer-reviewed coverage

What the literature says

5 peer-reviewed studies indexed on PubMed evaluate Scite in clinical contexts. The most relevant are shown below, ranked by editorial relevance score combining title match, study design, recency, and journal tier.

Analysis of clinical experience with angiotensin II: A meta-analysis and 4 AI.
Isern-de-Val Í, Antón Juarros S, Malingre Gajino M, et al.· Med Intensiva (Engl Ed)· 2025Meta-Analysis
Angiotensin II (ATII) was approved for distributive shock in Spain (2023). The objective is to assess the experience with ATII by comparing a meta-analysis (MTA) and 4 Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. A search was conducted in Pubmed®, Central®, Embase®, and Scopus®. Randomized clinical trials, non-randomized trials, and observational studies were included. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality. Odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were pooled. Four AI tools were used: Consensus, Perplexity, Elicit, and Scite. Intensive care medicine. One thousand s…
From Algorithms to Academia: An Endeavor to Benchmark AI-Generated Scientific Papers against Human Standards.
Woodrow J, Nassour N, Kwon JY, et al.· Arch Bone Jt Surg· 2025
The aim of this study is to quantitatively investigate the accuracy of text generated by AI large language models while comparing their readability and likelihood of being accepted to a scientific compared to human-authored papers on the same topics. The study consisted of two papers written by ChatGPT, two papers written by Assistant by scite, and two papers written by humans. A total of six independent reviewers were blinded to the authorship of each paper and assigned a grade to each subsection on a scale of 1 to 4. Additionally, each reviewer was asked to guess if the paper was written by…
Artificial Intelligence Tools in Biomedical Research: Part 1-Literature Search and Knowledge Mining.
Sen CK· Antioxid Redox Signal· 2026Editorial
The exponential growth of biomedical literature has rendered traditional search methods inadequate. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools have emerged and are developing as transformative solutions for literature search and knowledge mining. This first article of a series, intended to address different components of biomedical research, provides a comprehensive analysis of recent advancements, practical applications, and challenges in deploying AI for biomedical research. The objective of this work is to synthesize the evolution, capabilities, and limitations of AI-driven tools for literature di…
Searching smarter, not harder: leveraging AI to enhance literature searches for theory-driven reviews-A methodological case study.
Hunter R, Booth A, Wood L· BMC Med Res Methodol· 2026
Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into literature searching has the potential to enhance research synthesis by improving the identification of conceptually rich or otherwise difficult-to-locate evidence. Theoretical or conceptual literature reviews, including realist reviews, often involve resource-intensive searches because they aim to trace nuanced ideas, mechanisms, or conceptual relationships across multiple sources. This case study illustrates the use of AI-powered tools to support and streamline such literature searching, using a realist review as an example. We applied AI tools-…
Artificial Intelligence: The Cutting-Edge Research Companion.
DiCiurcio WT, Nanavati R, Miller M, et al.· Clin Spine Surg· 2026
Artificial intelligence (AI) represents a paradigm-shifting technology that empowers computers and software to emulate human intelligence by processing vast amounts of data. Its ubiquitous utilization continues to expand across diverse domains. AI software leverages data to discern patterns, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of various tasks. This paper reviews 6 prominent AI platforms: Elicit, Scite, Trinka, SciSpace, Scholarcy, and Litmaps. The study aims to explore their applications in literature composition and their potential to streamline the entirety of the process. Despite t…

See all on PubMed

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